At the Warrior Dash, the joy’s in the journey

ROANOKE — Covered in mud from head to toe, and dripping wet, Todd Perry stood smiling Saturday among thousands of others who had either just finished or were about to begin a most unusual five-kilometer race.

For one thing, the Warrior Dash taking place Saturday and Sunday at the DFW Adventure Park isn’t much of a race. Instead, it’s a dash — or walk, scoot, climb or jog — across a dozen or so obstacles designed specifically to slow even the fastest movers to a crawl, one that seems custom-made to remind every participant of the fun they might have had as a kid sloshing through a creek or playing in the rain.

Message received, said Perry, 35.

“It’s just awesome to get out here and get dirty and have a blast,” said Perry, a financial consultant from Allen, as the mud dried all over him. “It’s not something you do anymore.”

The event is expected to draw about 17,000 “warriors” over two days and another 10,000 or more friends, family and curious onlookers. Registration for Sunday’s runs is closed.

The dash itself is short — no more than 30 to 45 minutes for most folks, though organizers said there are always “the freaks” who insist on running full-speed from start to finish and can make it about 18 minutes.

But for the vast majority of the warriors, the course seemed custom-designed to remind them all that it’s the journey — not the destination — that counts.

There were teens as young as 14 and grand-dads and groups of sisters and just about every kind of combination of teams splashing through the course Saturday.

One family came from Oklahoma City with a single thought in mind.

“Fun!” shouted Les Hardy, standing with his wife and son and a couple of others, his silver hair bright against the dark, wet brown of the mud that covered every other part of him.

Fun, indeed, works just fine as a summary of what inspired the Chicago enthusiasts who organized the first dash in 2009, said Greg Bostrom, one of the national tour’s coordinators running the North Texas event Saturday.

He describes the race as “an extreme 5K obstacle course where you get to jump over fire and crawl through the mud under barbed wire. Then you get to celebrate with a day of live music, humongous turkey legs and cold beer.”

Last year, there were 10 races, and this year there will be 35. The open field where post-race festivities took place looked like a cross between a meeting of the Society for Creative Anachronism and a Lebowski Fest, where Fred Flintstone costumes, Viking outfits, turkey legs and fuzzy, horned helmets were the norm.

Standing not far from a sign that read, “Mud, Sweat and Beer,” 20-year Kenny Chamberlin of Plano took a break from chopping a nearby friend with a toy battle ax to admit he wasn’t old enough to enjoy the big tankards of beer that seemed to be everywhere.

But stripped to the waist, with mud everywhere and big red handprints painted across his face, he said he was having plenty of fun with just the mud and sweat.

“It was a little bit easier than I thought it would be,” he said. “I think they kind of talk it up a bit. But I had an advantage: I am a rock-climbing supervisor, so the cardio about killed me, but I passed everyone up on the obstacles. It’s been a lot of fun.”

For 36-year-old Ruth Calzada, a minister in Fort Worth, the obstacle course was more than just a gag. With the 12-foot wall she had to climb, the cargo-net bridge she had to cross, and the 30-foot-long black tunnel she had to crawl through, she said she needed all the help her friends, who called themselves Team Nicole in honor of a friend with breast cancer, were willing to give her.

“I am not OK with heights,” she said. “So the wall and the cargo net, they gave me trouble. But I could hear all my teammates shouting from the ground encouraging me to keep going. It just feels so good to stand here and be able to say, ‘I did it.’”

She had something besides the mud in common with most of the finishers Saturday: She’s ready to do it again, and she’s not sure she can wait till next year.

“I am going to be looking where I can go to do this again as soon as possible. It’s fantastic.”